The invention relates to an insole pad, such as a partial insole, for placement on top of an inner sole of footwear. The invention may however also be applied to full-length insoles. Partial insoles could include a ball of foot, or forefoot pads and a heel pads, but is not limited thereto. The partial insoles to which the invention relates are preferably smaller than the human footprint and are then used exclusively to cover only a portion of the inner soles of footwear.
Partial insoles, such as for supporting the ball of foot area of the human foot, are known. A way to provide cushioning properties to such pads is by providing them with protruding structures, such as ribs or columns to the bottom surface thereof. Usually these are arranged as geometric shapes that are distributed more or less uniformly over the area providing the cushioning properties. For cushioning energy during walking or running these uniformly arranged geometric structures are often allowed to buckle or collapse, as this was believed to improve the cushioning properties. However it is also important for partial insoles to have good adherence of the lower or bottom surface to the location of the inner sole of footwear, for which they are intended. Good adherence does benefit from possibly large adherence surfaces and adherence surfaces that show as little as possible deformation during use. In this regard the known structures have shown certain shortcomings, because the surface area available for adherence has been generally smaller that the surface area interrupted by the voids between the geometric structures. Overcoming these drawbacks by using stronger adhesives has introduced the problem of footwear damage when it was attempted to remove or replace the partial insoles at the end of their useful life.